A harder life after the wall fell

Most sociologists believed that, after the reunification of Germany, living conditions for women on both sides of the old border would eventually equalise. They were too optimistic. In the former Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) only 16% of mothers with children aged between three and five were in full-time employment in 2007, against 52% in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). While the birth rate in former East Germany has now fallen to West German levels, there are still considerable differences. In 2009, 61% of births in the former GDR were out of wedlock, compared with 26% in the former FRG.

East German women were especially hit by the social and political changes of reunification. In the old GDR, working mothers easily reconciled family and professional lives, unlike their counterparts in the West. Reunification led to a sharp rise in female unemployment in the East and resulted in drastic changes to their way of life and future plans, as well as a loss of self-confidence.

In Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, the labour participation rate for women rose after the 1950s, but was far higher in the GDR than in the FRG. Just before the fall of the Wall, 92% of East German women were employed, compared with 60% in the West — enjoying near-equality with men, unique in the world. Where West German women adapted their life plans to fit in with an overall scheme still shaped by the traditional image of the patriarchal family, in the East women’s economic independence from their husbands was a given.

The spectacular fall in the birth rate in East Germany during the 1970s encouraged the regime to provide incentives for working women to have children, and special efforts were made for single or divorced women. Although the ideological justification (producing manpower to build a socialist society) was often mocked, the government’s policy enabled women to reconcile career plans with parental constraints, whereas on the other side of the Wall, motherhood (...)